The Asymmetry Bias in Me, We–Others Distance Ratings. The Role of Social Stereotypes

Studies in cognitive and social psychology have revealed that the distance from X to Y may be estimated as shorter or longer than the same distance from Y to X. Results showed that this judgment depended on particular properties of compared objects and a reference point in social comparisons (Holyoak and Mah, 1982; Codol, 1987; Kamińska-Feldman, 1991, 2012; Arcuri and Serino, 1992; Hurtig et al., 1993; Hoorens, 1995; Otten and Van Der Pligt, 1996; Eiser et al., 2001). A similar type of illusion—called the asymmetry effect—was found in studies concerning diverse objects, including numbers or geometrical figures (Rosch, 1975), countries (Tversky, 1977) or self—others comparisons (Codol, 1984, 1993). Moreover, analogous asymmetry was displayed in estimations of psychological similarities between objects as in ratings of physical distances between objects (Codol, 1984, 1985). Thus, the asymmetry effect seems to be a universal phenomenon. The current focus concerns explications of the asymmetry effects in the self—others physical distance ratings. The main question raised is: what are the determinants of the asymmetry effects? We attempt to argue that the asymmetry in the self—other(s) distance ratings bias can be due to the self being a cognitive prototype in social perception or to the cognitive stereotypes of the other(s).